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Game Setup
Installation If you got FUEL on a console, then installation / running is pretty straight forward. If you got it for PC (cd/dvd or on Steam before Codemasters delisted it), then you may have issues getting it going now. The issue is FUEL requires Games For Windows Live (GFWL) to be installed in order for it to run, but GFWL has been retired by Microsoft and is officially "Going Away" July 2014. Some game developers have patched their old GFWL games to only require SteamWorks or nothing at all. Codemasters has tweaked a couple of their older games, but not FUEL. Instead, they removed it from the Steam store. So, that's a good indication that they're putting FUEL out to pasture without a second thought. And, it's sort of a big middle finger to all the folks that paid good money for it. So, the bad? You still need GFWL installed. The good? Microsoft is still letting folks manually download GFWL from their Xbox site. Whether that download goes away on July 2014 ... who knows. MS has said they're shutting down GFWL, but that could just mean the marketplace, servers, etc. MS has a good reputation of keeping their older, grandfathered software online for download, so it's a good change they'll keep the last GFWL client download on their site somewhere for folks to get and use on old games requiring it. Why? Because it would be an immense black-eye to MS if they got so may developers of older games lured into using GFWL just to remove it from existence entirely, leaving customers with no recourse to play their old GFWL games. This would leave a lot of customers upset and wary of any future endeavors by MS and game developers tying themselves to any online client MS rolls out. MS doesn't want that (I hope), so I assume the GFWL client will be online for a long time to download. (Big assumption, though.) For now, we can just focus on the present. The download on their site is just a pre-installer (ie: it just kicks off a pop-up that then proceeds to download and install the actual GFWL package). Once installed, you can start FUEL as normal. GFWL was used for co-op / online play, so with it put out to pasture FUEL is basically stuck in single-player mode (since it had no LAN play mode). As such, you really just need to make a local profile in GFWL when it loads. You can do this by selecting to make a new profile, then scrolling down on the screen it shows you. There will be a link that you can click to create a local profile. A local profile is just a dummy profile you can use to play a GFWL game offline. Video Options When FUEL starts, you're presented with an options / setup pop-up. The most important feature on it (besides the "Play" button, obviously) is the "Video Options" button. Let's run through the options, because some work, some don't, and some are ambiguous as to what they do. *'Resolution ' ... works and is self-explanatory. Setting a higher resolution has a greater impact on FPS performance, but also has the greatest impact on visual appearance of any other option available. *'Anti-aliasing' ... doesn't work and never has, so don't bother enabling it. You can try enabling AA through your video card's console, but I tried jacking around with that on my Nvidia GTX760 and all I ever got it to do was cause the graphics to disappear when the game loaded. I eventually gave up. *'Texture Quality' ... doesn't seem to matter. High, Low ... the textures look the same, and there doesn't seem to be an impact on FPS by using one vs. the other. *'Anisotropic (Filtering)' ... may work? may not work? It's hard to tell. I've tried Bilinear, Trilinear and up to 16x Anisotropic Filtering. I didn't really notice a difference. Like AA, I tried getting this to work via my gfx card's console, but didn't notice a difference either. *'Advanced ' ... lets you select / deselect shader maps to use: **'Normal Maps' ... hard to tell what it does. Looks like it may make the textures on vehicle tires a bit more detailed (?) **'Dirt Maps' ... lets your vehicles get dynamically muddy-looking. When enabled, your vehicles will get progressively dirtier and muddier when running on dirt roads and off-road, and they'll get cleaner when running through water. **'(Ambient) Occlusion Maps' ... should provide some extra shading around objects to give them more depth. I don't really notice anything with this on or off. However, if it does work, Ambient Occlusion tends to have a pretty big FPS hit on older systems. So, you might want to leave it off if running an older gfx card. **'Shadow Maps' ... work, but look atrocious. They dynamically generate shadows from objects based on the movement of the sun, but they tend to be blocky, smudgy messes that move along the ground. I haven't found any info online talking about a setup file to tweak to sharpen the shadows, so it seems to be stuck the way it is. Take it or leave it. So, basically for best ... Advanced Setup This can be done by editing files, registry and so on: * Triple Monitor Support * Disable Motion Blur * G25 Wheel Workaround * Windowed Mode FUEL: REFUELED Mod If you're an avid FUEL fan, then you've probably already stumbled across this mod. The author, Vetron, has basically worked about as much magic as anyone possibly could without having access to the source code of FUEL. The base mod itself has many tweaks that go under the radar, but you'll appreciate (eg: sorting vehicles by type). However, the mod lets you install modules to also tweak the menus, give you access to the debug console, and other things. Why is it listed here? Because the mod also has options to remove Bloom & Motion Blur. Bloom is that "eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight" effect you get when cresting hills towards the sun, or going in and out of tree lines. It can range from mildly annoying to down-right blinding at times. While it makes for interesting screen shots, it can be a handicap during races. Motion Blur can also be a handicap, as it blurs things in the distance and around the edges of the screen when going at high speeds. Using this mod lets you nix that visual cruft, so you can focus on the racing instead of the pretty graphics.